


As If He Means It

by MistressGalahat



Series: Twelve Days of Stories [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, During and Post-Season/Series 03, F/M, Hallucinations, M/M, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8738743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressGalahat/pseuds/MistressGalahat
Summary: Will didn't expect to see the ravenstag.And he didn't expect to see Hannibal again either.Not that it ever meant anything good was going to come out of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> On the second day of Christmas  
> my true love sent to me:  
> Two Crazy Cannibals

Will saw the ravenstag one day while walking his dogs.

It’s pelt was black and dark as tears, the feathers ruffled but impeccable under the moonlight. The snow was stacked high, compact and crunching under his boots as he stalked forward with Buster in the lead and Winston beside him.

Molly and Walter hadn’t joined him for the walk, and it had suited Will just fine. The time was awkward, and his mind had refused to let him stay with them in the moment. Blood and memories had haunted him for too long, and being near his wife and stepson didn’t always alleviate the pressure in his chest.

Under the moonlight, Will was free to walk and think and let the blood pour over the snow as he imagined. As he saw. As he designed.

It was strange for Will to stumble upon the sight of the ravenstag after so long. It hadn’t appeared to him since Hannibal had killed Abigail one last time. Had let them soak and cry in their shared blood as he ripped out pieces of them, physically and emotionally, that they would never get back.

Will had tried his best to get over it, and Molly had truly helped him. It never did stop the conversations with Abigail and the burning desire in his gut to let her be alive and breathing beside him.

Under the moonlight, she sometimes walked with him. Will could see her with a hand on Winston’s fluffy head, a smile playing on her lips as they discussed memories of their short time together.

It didn’t truly surprise Will that with the return of the ravenstag, Abigail came to him less and less.

Will laid eyes on it, nearly camouflaged in the dark of the night, the stars gleaming in its pelt the only thing that led his wandering mind to the wretched thing. His heart stopped pounding, as it so often did at the thought of Hannibal, but the ravenstag was gone before he could truly think to believe it.

Molly had told him not to always believe his eyes, but to Will the advice was easy listening but harder doing. He never did mention the stag or Abigail whenever he returned home from his long and stretching walks.

At times, Will only took Winston with him. On the days when most of the dogs slept in either Walter’s room or Molly and his own. They were hugged and petted, curled up to a source of warmth and comfort that Will found to be choking.

Winston never abandoned him, and Will appreciated the company on the silent walks, with or without Abigail. It was more than he could say about Hannibal Lecter, although Will did try hard never to let his thoughts linger for too long on the caress before he had been plunged to the kitchen floor. It was a memory that always turned sour as his mind turned to their bleeding daughter on the floor, and the snow beneath his feet became red and slick with a substance he hadn’t laid eyes upon since Florence.

The ravenstag tended to stray closer to Winston and himself when it was just the three of them. Cloven hooves kicking up sparks of electric snow as it followed them at a gentle pace Will had rarely seen in the truth that was Hannibal. Will had seen it on the day Abigail had died, and by God, had he seen it in Florence. In his house at Wolftrap when Hannibal had given himself entirely to Will in the only way he could.

He never spoke of Hannibal with Walter or Molly. It was his secret to keep, like the ravenstag at night or the savage thoughts that plagued the back of his tongue on bad days.

Walter didn’t show him too much interest in Will’s life before they had met, and it did evidently make the transition for him a lot easier. Molly, on the other hand, was harder to accept into his life. She was careful and tender, in all the ways that Hannibal had never been with him, and yet Will would not be able to say it to her face. That when he had first met her in the hospital after that fateful night at Hannibal’s house, when he was told that the girl he thought of as a daughter had died at the hands of a man who had broken him beyond recognition.

That his pieces wouldn’t ever fit together properly again, the corners jagged and uneven after the treatment Hannibal had put him through. Even if he knew that had he been given the chance to leave with Hannibal and Abigail, he would have chosen it over the bloodbath that became of their mismatched family.

Molly helped him to try and forget. And at times, Will could pretend he had never killed Randall Tier with his own hands and mounted him like the piece of art he had insisted on becoming. Had never tried to trick Hannibal with the fake death of Freddie Lounds. Could pretend that their sick courtship of murder had all been a trick of his mind and that the monster under his bed was a breathing Georgia Madchen.

But the papers didn’t want a happy story, they thrived off of tragedy and the blue heartstrings of people left behind.

It was perhaps the keenest of reasons why Will was so willing to turn his back on Jack when he showed up with a paper clipping of the Tooth Fairy’s latest victims. But dammit if his bleeding heart had never healed, and Jack knew that.

Will warned Molly that the man she would get back wasn’t going to be the same as the one that left. She had held a hand to his softly beating heart, and told him to go.

He gnashed his teeth and cursed his wife for the entire trip until he stood in front of Hannibal Lecter again. The glass panes did nothing to ease the suffocation that haunted Will with every breath that the two of them shared. In and out, like a well oiled clock that never broke. The ravenstag stopped showing up after he saw Hannibal. Smelled his natural scent and heard the scratch of pencil on paper.

Had Jack asked if his heart had leapt when he had seen the good doctor again, Will would have lied the way Hannibal had taught him one late night in the office, the fireplace burning as they threw journals and records onto the pyre.

A silver tongue adept and skilled at many things.

Jack never did ask about the lie, but it went without saying. The old man knew it as well as Will did.

Molly didn’t know. Which didn’t exactly help with things when Francis Dolarhyde decided to pay his home a visit. Will knew he shouldn’t be as relieved to hear none of the dogs were critically injured when Molly was clearly the worst of the bunch. He simply cared more about his animals than his wife.

Hannibal understood that part of him, but Hannibal wasn’t in that hospital with him.

The thought made him angrier than he had a right to be, and Walter mistakenly took it for anger at the Great Red Dragon. Will didn’t bother to correct his stepson, and allowed the anger to wallow and boil equally. It helped with the mask he had created, and while Jack knew him better than the rest, not even the old hound could sniff out that dark residue within Will.

The little, tiny, obsidian specks of Will didn’t regret getting in the car with Hannibal as he popped open the door and quirked a smile that left him weak. Left him hungry.

 

*

 

To have Francis Dolarhyde tear into his skin is unpleasant, but not an entirely new sensation. For it to be a knife that does his cheek in, is however radically different from how Hannibal would have done it.

Hannibal would savour it like a fine piece of lamb or kobe, but all Will tastes on his tongue is fizzing rage and adoration. The blood is the switch that finally allows him to become. To fly and rip and tear and shred and kill.

They kill together, like Hannibal has wanted them to do since he first laid eyes on him. It all feels like a hallucination when Dolarhyde drops to the ground, a spray of bodily fluids as beautiful a cascade as Will has ever seen it.

Will is reminded of the present he left Hannibal back at Castle Lecter, and he wonders if both of them will be there to see it. Standing side by side as he purposefully intended. It was a masterpiece left in a cave of glass and rot. It was part of him, part of his becoming.

Francis Dolarhyde is the last piece of him that he needed to feel complete. Will feels like dancing in the rain to hide his tears of joy, but there is no rain, only fallen blood. But the desire is there, deeply rooted and viciously intertwined with Hannibal Lecter.

And it grows right through his bones like dandelions through concrete. Will is tamed and wild, like the dead dragon before them, he is and he isn’t.  
Hannibal has been both his saviour and his tormentor, but never both at the same time. This is how both of them work, how they fit together and twist around each other as the red streams down and they give themselves a moment to breathe.

Antlers are carrying Will off the cliff, a gentle push as he pulls Hannibal down alongside him. The arms ensnare him like an elaborate trap, and the rational part of Will knows he should struggle. Another part of him wants to enjoy the warmth Hannibal is so freely offering him, and in the end, that is the part of him that wins out.

It is the part that has always found the ravenstag to be a striking beauty to transcend above and beyond the natural order. To live, to breathe, to create. To design.

Will designs one last piece with Hannibal as they take the tumble and share eye contact a second before they hit the water.

That their skin isn’t angry from a snarling wave of salt water doesn’t strike Will’s tired mind as unusual. Even when Chiyoh pulls them up with a net, she doesn’t register with Will.

All he can see are Hannibal’s eyes and the pits of darkness and splendid blood that they drink from the sight of him. Will lets him, allows him to not feel anything but the flash of pitch black want that echoes with every stroke of Hannibal’s fingers against his bloodied cheek.

The wound is not as aggravating as he thought it would be, and with Hannibal caressing it every day, kissing the pleasantly blooming scar, Will is at ease.  
Jack will never be. Alana and Margot both know better than to believe it finished. Chiyoh had no wish to become their next meal, and left briefly after helping them across the border to France, as tied to Hannibal as she will ever be.

Hannibal and Will lash out from time to time, as brilliant minds tend to do, but with a well cooked meal every now and again, there are enough apologies going around to forgive each other for the given transgression.

That they will live to be old and grey doesn’t strike Will as an opportunity, so they drink and celebrate and love together in a way no one else will understand.

Will is Hannibal. Hannibal is Will.

They are both the ravenstag now, and their hunger only grows.

**Author's Note:**

> And the quest for twelve stories continue. See you in two days for another one.


End file.
